Abstract
When we imaginatively picture what might happen, we may take what we imagine to be either realistic or fantastic. A wine glass falling to the floor and shattering is realistic. A wine glass falling and morphing into a bird and flying away is fantastic. What does the distinction consist in? Two important necessary conditions are here defined. The first is a condition on the realistic representation of spatial configuration, grounded in an account of the imagistic representation of spatial configuration. The second is a condition on the manner in which realistic courses of mental imagery may be grounded in remembered perceptions. This is defined in terms of an account of the representation of comparative similarity.
| Translated title of the contribution | Über den Unterschied zwischen realistischer und fantastischer Imagination |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Pages (from-to) | 1563–1582 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Erkenntnis. An international journal of analytic philosophy |
| Volume | 87 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Aug 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Open access funding provided by Austrian Science Fund (FWF). This work was supported by a grant from the Austrian Science Fund (the FWF) for Project I-3517-G24, The Puzzle of Imagistic Cognition. I thank audiences in Hradec Králové, Milan, Tübingen, Umeå, Salzburg, Konstanz, and Bern for their stimulating questions. I thank Solveig Aasen for help with the ballet example. Three referees for Erkenntnis provided very useful critical comments resulting in significant changes.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).
Fields of Science and Technology Classification 2012
- 603 Philosophy, Ethics, Religion